How many people today grab a takeaway coffee cup from the local cafe to drink on the go? We don’t know, but the number must be enormous.. Most every one of the above have a plastic top that will last 100s of years. Some cafes still use plastic cups that last a similar time. Is 10 minutes of coffee worth 100s of years of trash?
These items can be seen littering our gutters and on our streets all over the place. If they were all cardboard, they would still be littered, but they would, at least, be gone in a short time.
They do not need to be made of plastic.
On the way home from the gym last week, a distance of about 1 km (1/2 mile), I counted the items of plastic litter on the curb as I walked. In that short distance I counted 63 pieces of plastic litter. Plastic drink bottles, bottle tops, candy wrappers, plastic film, polystyrene fragments etc. That seemed to be a lot to me. I guess it is a generational thing. Our parents would have been horrified to see that amount, whereas it seems to go unnoticed by our youth of today. In another 20 years how many pieces will there be on this stretch, -- 200? What will today’s youth think of that new amount then when they are older? Will their children be so readily accepting of a higher amount of litter? Use of Biodegradable Plastics “Well-Intentioned but Wrong”, Warns Top Scientist
Posted on July 7, 2016 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste NewsWhile most of this article is correct, there are discrepancies and there is other information not presented. What was presented about compostable plastic as not biodegrading where consumers discard their rubbish is correct and that is a big problem for any compostable plastic. There is also no infra structure in place to separately collect and transport compostable plastic so its recycling % is all most zero. Another big problem for this material. Not to be confused with its recyclability, which is zero.
Then while you made reference to it you didn’t mention Degradable plastics or oxodegradable. This is a disaster of a product. It causes the plastic to fragment into little bite sized pieces which blow and flow around the environment. It does not fragment if buried in a landfill as no sunlight or oxygen there. Its only purpose it to make plastic waste up on top the ground less visible to the human eye. But very dangerous to the environment. It cannot be mainstream recycled either as it contaminate the new products. Their only disposal method is incineration and if it is to be incinerated then why go to the bother to make it degradable in the first place? Degradable plastics particularly bags are greenwashed and sold as biodegradable, good for the environment. When in reality they are the opposite.
There is a newer third option, landfill-biodegradable. This is traditional plastic like LDPE with an organic additive in it. This attracts natural microorganisms in a landfill for example to digest the plastic. Not a fast process, years as a min for any plastic with a thickish wall section. But as long as it biodegrades in 20 years or so then that plastic is not being left for the next generation to deal with. In the ocean there are very microorganisms hence landfill-biodegradable plastics will act like any other plastic in the ocean.
None of the above are any good for the ocean and the only solution there is to stop using disposable plastic items all together.
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